This chapter uses Derrick Bell’s theory of ‘interest convergence’ to examine the relationship between academic criminology and the criminal justice system in relation to race and racism. A pattern of changing convergence and divergence is observed, between three key groups—the colonial (and neocolonial) university and the criminal justice system, and the front-line workers, clients, and students within both systems. The chapter argues that neither the university’s nor the criminal justice system’s interests are aligned with anti-racism at a structural level, but that there is an ‘understorey’ of anti-racist interest convergence at the level of the front-line practitioner which can be built upon.